Under a White Sky

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction explores humanity's profound impact on the environment and poses a critical question: Can we alter nature to save it after causing so much damage? Elizabeth Kolbert, a prominent environmental writer, delves into the daunting challenges we face as we strive to reverse decades of harm to the atmosphere, oceans, forests, and rivers. In her signature persuasive and darkly comic style, she presents various innovations aimed at averting disaster, while also acknowledging the potential for unforeseen consequences. Readers meet scientists working to save the Devils Hole pupfish, the rarest fish species, and engineers transforming carbon emissions into stone. Kolbert discusses the creation of resilient "super coral" through assisted evolution and researchers considering the radical idea of shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and alter the sky's color. She suggests that human civilization has long been an exercise in defying nature, and paradoxically, the very interventions that have endangered our planet may now represent our best hope for its salvation.